Can you believe I didn't notice the creative placement of the title letters on the cover until I started writing this post?
Synopsis:
Ori grew up in multiple foster homes. He always believed he was human, but he found out several months prior to the start of the book that he was actually born an avian shifter.
Ori is 20 and won't find out until he's 21 exactly what his shifter form will be, but it seems most likely that he'll be a duck. Unfortunately for him, ducks are low in the avian hierarchy, and he's forced to do the bidding of every avian around him and take whatever abuse they dish out, too. Ori becomes so accustomed to this life that he's shocked and bewildered when Raynard, a hawk shifter, sees the kind of life he's living and takes him away to be a servant as his home instead. Although Raynard resists his attraction to Ori at first, Ori eventually becomes Raynard's submissive. The two are happy together, and Raynard decides he'd like to have Ori around indefinitely, but he has to wait until after Ori shifts for the first time.
Review:
I did not like this book. It's a BDSM story, which I already stated in my review for Katrina Strauss's Some Kind of Stranger is not something I generally like, so I've thought about whether my dislike stems from that or from other aspects of the story. I think I would have disliked this book even if it had not featured BDSM.
Raynard and Ori, especially Ori, were incredibly boring characters. When they were together, they were little more than a dominant and a submissive. When Raynard wasn't with Ori, he spent his time trying to put his late uncle's business in order, but none of that was ever shown. Prior to living with Raynard, Ori grew up in lots of different foster homes and eventually ended up at a club where other avian shifters verbally, physically, and sexually abused him, but, again, little was shown. I wanted to know more. Did Raynard have any friends? What kind of business did his uncle leave him? Did Ori ever leave Raynard's house for anything other than attending to his needs as an avian shifter or to run the occasional errand for Raynard? Did Ori ever think about anything other than Raynard and things related to Raynard? Did Ori enjoy anything besides cleaning Raynard's house and having sex with Raynard? (The answer to the last couple questions is probably “no,” which should explain why I thought Ori was the more boring of the two characters. He was so. Incredibly. Dull. Not unlikable, but dull.)
